Bird flu survivors' antibodies effective

Bird flu survivors' antibodies effective

nternational study has used antibodies from Vietnamese survivors of avian influenza to perfect treatments against the virus.

Researchers have determined how specific antibodies taken from adults who recovered from the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza were reproduced in the laboratory and proved effective at neutralizing the virus in culture and in mice.

The H5N1 influenza virus has caused an estimated 306 known cases in humans, 185 of them fatal, as well as disease and death in millions of poultry around the world.

Now, physicians based at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland; and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., have shown monoclonal antibodies generated from blood of human survivors of the H5N1 virus are effective at both preventing infection in mice and neutralizing the virus in those already infected.

The research had been fast-tracked for funding by Britain's Wellcome Trust, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
source:www.sciencedaily.com